Mad House and Independence Catch Up

Is that February I see?  The first month of 2010 has FLOWN by!  We’ve had a hard time catching up since the holidays (as evidenced by my absence from the blog), but we’re looking at a few clear weekends, then a trip to the Tucson area to visit friends, and then a (hopefully) nice relaxing break from the hustle and bustle!

So in the last month, I completed my student teaching for my childbirth education certification, worked on the test, nearly finished the reading, and scheduled my last required observation.  I picked a business name (stay tuned for it, complete with links), and bartered a web design.  Yay!

Additionally, E is now up to six teeth, we had several dinners with friends, a game night or two, bartered hunting for mechanical work on the truck (hallelujah!), had to post bail to get Josie out of doggie jail (she made a break for Hampden and got picked up), and held a Mad Tea Party for Rick’s and my un-birthday!  The last was so fun, and I made an amazing hat thanks to a great tutorial, and a little friendly encouragement.

It’s been 37 weeks since I started tracking our family with the Independence Days project.  I use the term ‘tracking’ loosely, however, since I have not really kept good track for the last ten or twelve weeks.  This is what I can say for sure, from my memory.  Every day we collect three eggs from our five hens.  Pretty good since it is the dead of winter and we don’t give them a heat lamp or anything.

We have not planted or harvested any veggies whatsoever, but Rick did go make hamburger and sausage with his uncle and grandpa.  We used all the lard from the hogs (this years and last years) for this.  So we added about 30 pounds of ground meat to the freezer.  We also found pints of blackberries on sale for 77 cents each once, and bought like 20 and frozen them.  We should have bought more though, since we’ve eaten them all already (Rick went on a smoothie kick last month).

As I mentioned above, we bartered hunting for mechanics – and I say this totally falls under building community food systems.  Our friend is a mechanic and replaced the belts and water pump on the 4 Runner for us, with the promise that Rick would teach him and his family to hunt this year.  He saved us over $900!  I say we really got the better end of the deal in some ways because Rick loves hunting so much, and he is very happy for another reason to spend more time outdoors doing it.

We have surely been eating the food as well around here.  Most weeks all we buy at the store is dairy, bread, rice or beans, flour and sugar, coffee, peanut butter, maple syrup, and sometimes eggs to supplement what we’ve got from the hens.  And bananas, as I think Henry is addicted.  We’ve been eating veggies and meat from the freezer, our peaches, pickles and jams, frozen fruit – delish!

We’ve been talking about the garden a lot the last week or so.  I think that the sun coming up at 7:00am again is making us think Spring is around the corner.  We received the Baker Creek heirloom seed catalog in December, and have since been lustfully drooling over every page and variety since.

Alas – my writing time is up today – E is, shall we say, requesting – my presence.

More to come soon.